


The Funeral March for the Living

by EchoResonance



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Yullen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 05:58:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5573416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoResonance/pseuds/EchoResonance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say the only time a swan sings is moments before its death, and that it's the most beautiful sound in existence. Kanda doesn't believe in such things. No sound, however pleasant, can be beautiful when it heralds the death of something, of someone, who does not deserve to be gone so soon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Funeral March for the Living

**Author's Note:**

> Yullentide prompt 7: Swan Song (with a little Parabatai thrown in)

When Allen and Kanda could stop arguing for the span of a few minutes, they were a flawless team. They were both unyielding, powerful, and were so quick on their feet sometimes people wondered jokingly if they ever even touched the ground. They didn’t need to talk strategy, they didn’t need to fall back to regroup. Allen just  _ knew _ where Kanda would strike next, and Kanda just  _ knew  _ when Allen would place checkmate on his side of the board. They trusted each other to handle themselves in battle, so they wasted little time uselessly watching the other’s back, and yet they could  _ sense _ if something was truly amiss and leap to their partner’s aid. Even if they denied doing so all the while.

If ever there were two soldiers more perfect together on the battlefield, not even Bookman had ever known of them.

Off the battlefield, however, it was amazing how the same things that made them a perfect team meant that they could barely stand being in the same room for any length of time. They were too alike, it was clear. Either they would fall in love, or they would despise each other’s existence, and there was a very fine line between the two that they regularly crossed. They were mortal enemies, and then they were a perfect pair. 

Luckily, today was one of the latter times when Kanda was, if not outright concerned for his partner, at least confused about his absence from any place he would normally have been. He’d gone by the dining hall, the training rooms, the gardens, even his bedroom, and the Beansprout was nowhere to be found. He’d run into the Leverrier’s dog with the spots on his forehead, but the young man seemed to be in search of Allen as well, and Kanda had no intention of helping  _ him _ along. A Third Exorcist, a fierce advocate for the Black Order, and a liar with every breath, the stranger from the Vatican had no sympathy from Kanda and no respect, and that had as much to do with him attaching himself to a displeased Allen’s side as it did his near-worship of the Order.

However, seeing the bastard that came to HQ after the Ark fiasco gave Kanda another idea, and as quietly as he could, he slipped into the lab where the majority of the science division forwent sleep in favor of studying the the Ark’s entrance. It wasn’t hard, because as smart as they might have been, they weren’t observant, and Kanda had long since become a master of sneaking past the people at HQ unseen--he had a habit of escaping the hospital wing and pissing off the nurse in doing so, but she always found him later. She was the only one he hadn’t yet managed to escape cleanly. 

It was with great impatience that Kanda waited in the shadows for an opening, trying to tune out the irritating mechanical beeping and whirring that filled the room. A scientist nearby was asleep, drooling all over his paperwork, and Johnny was frantically running back and forth, excitedly chattering at a speed Kanda couldn’t believe anybody understood. Komui, as always, was conspicuously unhelpful, holding his stupid coffee mug and haranguing Reever, who was  _ trying _ to do his job in spite of the moron standing at his shoulder.

No one was watching. Kanda darted quickly and silently across the open space, leaping up the stairs and through the doorway unseen. 

It was a strange experience, even though it was hardly the first time he’d entered the Ark. He was stepping into what he knew to be more or less a space cut off from the actual, physical realm, and yet the sun was somehow shining brightly overhead, and the cobblestone street beneath him certainly felt solid for something not technically real. 

Also strange was the way his feet began to carry him in one direction without him giving them a proper destination. It was nothing but instinct pulling him onward, though he knew at the same time where he was going. Building after building passed him as he walked through the massive and empty city, in his opinion stupid and superfluous as no one had ever lived there to his knowledge. Why make something meant for transportation into something so grand and so useless? 

He came to the door he was searching for, not far from the HQ exit, but hesitated before pushing through. He could hear the piano inside, hear the faint notes hanging in the air, light as a child’s breath, and he wasn’t sure how to proceed. For Allen to have returned to the piano on the Ark, he had to be in a seriously low mood, and Kanda didn’t know that his presence would be appreciated or even welcomed when the Beansprout was in that state. Maybe he should wait by the door until the song was finished, or even until Allen decided to leave; there was often quite a large span of time between the end of the song and Allen’s reappearance. While he deliberated, the song continued to drift through the gap in the partially open door.

Kanda didn’t like the song. He wasn’t much for soft and sweet to begin with, not even in music, but this went beyond his distaste for trivial and irritating. That song was too many things, both for the Order and for Allen, and none of them were good. To the Order, the song was a tool just like the Exorcists despite the fact that it was also a link to the Noahs and despite the fact that they only had it because one of their own had a Noah’s memory locked away inside him. It was a tool, a danger, and a traitor all in one for them. And for Allen, it was black mark across the memory of his adoptive father he had loved so dearly and it was the fear of losing himself and the fear of never having been in control of his own life. It was dark and scary and sick. There was no reason for Kanda to like it, and there were a multitude of reasons to hate it. If he could have erased the song from existence, from every person’s memory and every musical score that might have held it, he would have done it, for his own peace of mind as well as Allen’s.

To Kanda, the song was dark and it was twisted, even if the sound was light and hopeful, and all he could think was that it sounded like a death march. It was that song that put Allen under suspicion from the people the fool called his “family,” and it was that song, Kanda knew, that would be playing if Neah ever fully woke. That song was Allen’s funeral dirge, a beautiful, beautiful piece of music that accompanied each moment leading to a rapidly approaching end.

All it was was a harbinger of doom. And Kanda hated it almost as much as Allen did.

When the music stopped, Kanda let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and opted to let himself in, pushing the door carefully open and stepping off of the street and into the glaringly white room where Allen often escaped to nowadays. Kanda’s eyes immediately found the Beansprout’s back, and he cautiously walked toward him. Allen had to know he was there, but he gave no inclination from where he sat on the bench in front of the piano, his hands clasped loosely in his lap. 

There were no words shared when Kanda came to a stop directly behind Allen, but much like in battle, no words were needed in that obnoxiously white room. Allen knew he was there and why, and he leaned back on his bench ever so slightly, pressing his back against Kanda’s middle and blowing a long, slow breath out through pursed lips. The back of his head rested against Kanda’s sternum, tilted back slightly so that his hair fell out of his face, and Kanda offered no comment, simply raising his hands to settle them on his partner’s tense shoulders. Words were useless, and the moment either of them opened their mouths would be the moment the fragile peace in the room shattered and they fell back into hurling useless insults that meant nothing to either of them. 

So, for what felt like a very, very long time, the two of them remained where they were, barely touching, while Kanda and Allen silently protested the swan song that was still trying to hang in the air around them.


End file.
